The Mayans were right, as it turns out, when they predicted the world would end in 2012. It was just a select world: the G.O.P. universe of arrogant, uptight, entitled, bossy, retrogressive white guys. [...] Instead of smallpox, plagues, drought and Conquistadors, the Republican decline will be traced to a stubborn refusal to adapt to a world where poor people and sick people and black people and brown people and female people and gay people count.

Celebrity distorts democracy by giving the rich, beautiful, and famous more authority than they deserve.

F.D.R. achieved greatness not by means of imposing his temperament and intellect on the world but by reacting to what the world threw at him.

Wooing the press is an exercise roughly akin to picnicking with a tiger. You might enjoy the meal, but the tiger always eats last.

Women have become so obsessed with not withering, they've forgotten that there are infinite ways to be beautiful.

When I need to work up my nerve to write a tough column, I try to think of myself as Emma Peel in a black leather catsuit.

A friendship between reporter and source lasts only until it is profitable for one to betray the other.